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Thursday, June 30, 2005

My sister Solfrid lives in a lovely little house way south in Norway, has a state art grant and has spent her life living on, with and for her art: textiles, installations, drawings and paintings. One of the things she does now is exhibit and curate exhibitions at Lista fyr, which is a large lighthouse surrounded by gardens and a bird-watch area and bird resort. This summer the place will again be filled with artists, Norwegian and foreign, a mixture of different media.

And on the list of artists I also found Magnar Åm, a composer of contemporary music. If you happen to be a contemporary music buff, Magnar Åm is famous far beyond the Norwegian borders. But he is also very active locally, and directs both the choir my daughter sings in, and the choir my husband sings in.

Solfrid and Magnar are both very much living examples of the title of the exhibition. They have visions and ideas which reach beyond the small towns they live and work in, but they commit themselves to the community as well as to their international contacts, creating growth, development and making their little spot on the planet a better place to live in for more than themselves.

And if you would like to see an example of their work, the exhibition at Lista is open through July and August. Go there, and enjoy.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Sometimes, we're just plain lucky, as Dennis Jerz and his wonderful little family were on father's day. Walking away from a dreadful accident, knowing you and all you love could have been dead, together with potentially scores of strangers, if it had just happened a little before or a little after, is an experience that makes you treasure life. Reading about survival in the weblog of a person so far away drives home how we identify and grow close to the people we communicate with and who are open and willing to communicate with us.

And although Dennis insists on maintaining a meta-level to his experience, and claims his description is a bad essay because he doesn't convey emotion in the writing, I find he does, and strongly. Perhaps you need to enjoy the matter-of-fact style of the sagas to understand what I mean, but look at the things he is focusing on: only a man in shock, reaching for his skill, competence and the safety of his profession will do things like analyse his own narrative of the crash, consider the genre choices of reading for his little daughter while waiting for the ambulance, comment on how he has adjusted the picture to make it more aesthetically pleasing and pointing out that his aesthetic faculties are still working despite the shock. More likely it worked because of the shock, letting him be the strong, capable father until everybody are safe, the emergency is over and it's possible to process emotions without making bad worse.

Which, being a cold Scandinavian who considers being reasonable in the face of chaos as one of the main virtues, I think is an admirable reaction.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Outside the hotel in Tromsø, seagulls were crying through the grey, rainy, light night. As I left for the meeting in the morning I passed one standing in a narrow alley, yelling short, penetrating warnings at me. I walked quickly past, but not so quickly I didn't notice the dead chick, a grey ball of feathers on the asphalt next to the large white gull. As I had passed the seagull I was suddenly attacked, something bumping into my head from behind. Turning, I saw the large gull land next to the dead chick.

Later that day, as I returned, the adult gull was still in the alley, still guarding the miserable little corpse. I walked past, quickly, expecting another attack, but nothing happened, only the sharp, painfully penetrating screams from the orange beak. Later that evening, the dead chick and the mother were still there. And as I returned past midnight, the grey rainheavy sky as bright as it had been at midday. Through the night I heard the gulls, complaining, threatening, arguing. The characteristic, short screeches of the gull in the alley were unmistakeable, a very different sort of warning from the calls of the others. As I left, 24 hours after I had encountered that miniature tragedy for the first time, the seagull was still there, guarding the body of its dead chick.

I have no idea why the chick fell. Perhaps the nest was perched at a dangerous spot, and it just dropped out, helped even by a gust of wind. Perhaps another seagull had raided it, and this was the only chick the distraught parent could find. Some cruel human might have cleaned a windowsill of nest materials and chicks, this one falling to the pavement, a rat might have climbed the roofs... the options are many. But some things were obvious. The adult bird was protecting the little dead body. It was in distress. It was not going to abandon its responsibility. Nothing was more important than to protect this little, dead bundle of fluff. No creature was to large to attack in the line of duty.

Do the annoying, noisy, stinking seagulls have feelings? I have no idea. But the little tragedy in that alley in Tromsø managed to make me choose a different route after the first couple of encounters. I don't think out of fear, but perhaps, from some kind of odd respect for what I interpreted as grief and a desperate need to protect your children. Perhaps what I avoided was my own fear of standing like that over my children.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

I woke up this morning, astonished at what my sleeping mind could come up with. I was with some of my childhood friends. We were a few who played role playing games long before there was a name or a system for it in Norway, dreaming up stories and dramas, and playing them out in the forests around where we lived.

In my dream we were all adults, but still role playing. Only some of the role play had backfired into reality. I no longer remember every detail, lucid and logical though they were, but it involved pern-type firelizards (miniature dragons), familiars, astral bodies and magic children. So I called in some of the people I had played with for a long time, but who had freaked out because they felt it got too real. The logic was: If they felt it was too real, perhaps they had already experienced these situations, and I had just not listened to them.

Turned out they were no good, their "too real" was on the emotional plane. But one of them brought a long a teacher/mentor, who looked like "the fat aging academic male" in all movies where they need some disposable nerd. And I started discussing educational planning with him.

He claimed that the master study they were planning was created after the structure of herd behaviour: by seeing in what sequence students would naturally choose subjects, they would make the path through the courses as easy and natural as possible. I claimed that what he described was supermarket planning, and that true herd/flock behaviour was non-linear, unless the group was spooked and forced to act in the same sequence. I used birds as an example. While they would, when relaxed, spread all over the red currant bushes in the garden, eating, singing, resting, fluttering about looking for something else, the presence of our cat would make them all fly up at the same time.

The argument was that the natural, unhurried pattern of choice for a group of students would be no pattern at all - unless some outside authority or threath spooked them. Which is what we use exams and assessments for - to make them all fly in the same direction to save their grades.

When I woke up, I felt like I had been having an epiphany. I understood why students want to move things around and direct their own progress, and why I have always felt that was important. That is more how the old Norwegian educational system worked, and how it still works to a certain degree if you go for a free bachelor. I also understood the modifying effect of tests, tasks and exams, and the need for these things to have real consequences. Well, not that I want to need to kill and eat students, but the need for apprehension, fear, tension and the possibility of significant loss at the other end of the process was suddenly clear to me.

It was weird. And interesting, as were the metaphors my mind used to tell me those things.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Business Week has started with blogs for several of their employees. One of those is Michael Mandel, their Chief Economist, with Economics Unbound. Michael was the person I met through IMs, and when I dropped a broad hint that I knew something about blogs, it took him a very short time to figure out who I was, and from there an even shorter time to invite me to visit Business Week at 48th street during the ICA conference - which was taking place at 53rd street, same avenue.We chatted about Business Week, about newspapers in general, and about the electronic revolution. My brain was elegantly and politely tapped for information, during our walk around their offices with their extravagant view of the city of Manhattan, and even more so during lunch at City Lobster.I don't know if Michael actually learned anything useful, but I did. I also had it reconfirmed that those people I meet online, who appear to be nothing but words, are frequently nice and always real persons.

I have been hiding from my responsibilities towards this project, Siida, a computer game/computer exploration focusing on sami culture and language. Apparently that was appropriate, because the development has been hibernating through winter, like any sensible thing in the northlands. Monday I will be in a meeting in Tromsø, midnight sun and long-not-seen cousins waiting at the other end of a trip as long as from Oslo to Paris. It is going to be a great trip, interesting project, amazing landscape and brilliant and fun people. Look at this: I am actually enthusiastic about something resembling work!

The long-term reader knows that I have had severe problems with my back. I am now much, much better, so good that I am starting to hurt where the experts expect me to hurt. It's odd, but I am actually grateful for that discomfort. It is a sign that my body has started to register sensations below "please just shoot me like they do horses" level.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Now that it looks like things are falling into place, I dare talk about some parts of my longer term plans.

This spring I had a phone call from, of all things, an editor at a small Norwegian publishing house (yes, that makes it miniscule). She told me she had heard loads of favourable things about me (good beginning), and was I interested in writing a book on computer games for the Norwegian college/university market?

Was I? I was.

But since offers like these don't come with big advances attached, at least not in Norway, to be able to do something like that, I have to incorporate it into the responsibility we have at the college for communicating both our own research and that done elsewhere, and making it available for scholars in Norway, in Norwegian. This is normally done through shorter articles or simple lectures and teaching, but one way to do it can be by writing a text book. So I applied the college for time to do so. I wanted to have 6 weeks this fall to prepare for the book, and the spring term to write the first draft. I have been negotiating the work-load this autumn to get that much time for my own research, and kind of got that into place today. Then I heard that I got the spring term for research and writing.

Step one in the stairway to my big work has been built. In the next year I can walk up on it. Bootstrapping my own thought-processes, as well as my academic publishing, if everything works right.

Monday, June 20, 2005

The autumn starts settling into place, and it looks like it may be manageable. Teaching and administration is a given, it has to happen to a certain extent. But it looks like I may be able to get back for the 100 hours of comittee work to reorganise the college, and also keep up the plans for 3 weeks of no admin/teaching for all attached to the study, to spend the time writing, reading, doing research or somethign similar sorting under FOU on our lists of tasks. Those three weeks are very important to me, and they have been to others, as if nothing else then it is a good time to take that week of vacation saved up from summer, or just getting a handle on all the overtime that tends to accumulate after a period of intensive teaching and preparing.

I guess this should do it. What is not settled yet are things like: do I manage to move the meeting at the board of research a little, to get a longer period in NYC, will I have the cash for the fee at State of Play (the NYC trips do tend to drain the wallet), when is the next Board of Research meeting, will I get the resources needed for the autumn term, thus liberating this much time for me?----Update: yes, don't know yet, late enough, yes. :)

Friday, June 17, 2005

They have found the graves of two women, ritually murdered and buried in positions of significance, in a Maya Indian crypt. The conclusion from this is that they have been politically important, as somebody went to that much trouble to kill them.

Charming, isn't it, to know that women have been sufficiently significant to kill and bury in complicated manners.

Going from Volda to New York, one of the intense experiences is that of the crowds. Always packed with people, the city buzzes with human life. It is both fascinating and terrifying, and in the summer heat I avoid other human bodies, no longer wishing to have them close. Is that how simple I am, the desire for humanity ruled by a need for warmth? On the plane back I was freezing, and I found myself edging gently closer to the man next to me. His warmth, radiating from his arm and shoulder was so attractive, I was fantasising about leaning in, cuddling against his side like a cat or a puppy.

How different, this cool place, where summer is defined by a lack of snow and the colour green. There is space around my body, as I walk to work, silence, for long stretches, nothing but the click of my computer. And from this cool, quiet, distant place I read the weblog of an indian woman, an academic, watch her pictures and read her stories, and wonder who I would have been if that was the natural state of my life.

I wonder occasionally/ if I was born/ elsewhere/ in a different country/ with a different name/ I might have been a brunette/and not particularly tall/ and round/ and my voice was.../yes, it would sound like hell, when I found a tune.

Byt Ateya's world is a different one yet, her everyday further still, from Volda, than even the crowded intensity of New York, and her trainrides are colourful fairytales when read from across the world, a tale of bodies trapped in intimacy or forced apart in ways which make me feel exotic in the cool isolation of the north.

I try to keep the "kids" out of the blog as much as possible. Well, it is impossible to do so all the time, as they are inspiration and assistance as much as offspring, but you haven't heard me gush with how great they are for a while, hmm?

What I wanted to tell you is how nice it is to have grown children. To be met at the airport by a daughter who happily takes you home from a long trip, chatting about her straight A's for her final exams and her plans for the University next year. She will be leaving me, going off on her own to become another person. The independent adult, not the soft little girl who still crawls into the couch next to me to put her head on my shoulder and check what I am up to.

I wanted to tell you about putting my arms about my little boy, hug him and find my head on his chest, only reaching his cheek if I get up on my toes and stretch. My wonderful cuddly pet, who would wrap his arms about my neck and never want to let go - tonight he is having an improvised barbeque with his friends, the June night at its darkest, and still it's light out, and I am just barely worried that they stay out this long.

I may be getting old. I am certainly maudling. But I have always thought what ever age my children were was the best. I recently decided I really love young adults. There is nothing better than seeing them grow into their potential. Who needs soft marsipan-sweet cheeks and sticky paws when I can have a firm jaw and a strong hand to carry the heavy suitcase or drive the car? Perfect.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

From Karsten Weber and the e-journal IRIE (International Review of Information Ethics), a call for papers on ethics on electronic games:

The Ethics of E-GamesCall for Papers for Vol. 4 (02/2005)

- Deadline for abstracts: July 30, 2005- Notification of acceptance to authors: September 15, 2005- Deadline for full chapters: October 30, 2005- Publication: December, 2005

Introduction

Computer-based or e-games, in both standalone and networked incarnations (including “Massive Multiplayer Online Games” or MMOGs), represent one of the most popular – and an economically profitable – uses of ICTs and CMC in the contemporary world. Such games not only simulate a range of human social interactions, from building (perhaps utopian) societies to historical and fantasy warfare of every age: the games further occasion and catalyze a range of human interactions that rightly inspire research from a variety of disciplines and specialties. Especially violent games (e.g., Quake, Doom, Grand Theft Auto III, and others) have generated some critical discussion, ranging from “moral panics” in popular media to social science investigations into possible effects and consequences of participating in such games. But e-games represent a relatively neglected subject in Information Ethics. At the same time, however, if broader discussion of e-games is to include responsible and informed ethical reflection, much more critical reflection from the various perspectives of Information Ethics upon the multiple dimensions of e-games and game-playing is needed. Hence this special issue of IRIE calls for such critical ethical reflection.

Possible Topics and Questions

1. The Rules – and thus Ethics – of Play

While much has been written about potential psychological and social consequences of e-games, very little academic research has focused on the ethics of e-games. The ethical questions and issues here, however, are many – for example:A. What ethics – if any – may be expected of gamers (e.g., honesty, fairness, respect, integrity - see: Code of Ethics http://investors.egames.com/ethics.asp)? B. On the contrary, is it ethically justified to suspend such ethical expectations within specific games (e.g., Grand Theft Auto III) – precisely because these are “just a game,” i.e., a kind of psychological and/or social exercise that, like Carneval and other traditional events that temporarily invert prevailing social norms, may have cathartic and/or other beneficent effects?C. Are there ethical norms to be expected of game designers – e.g., avoiding designs that intentionally or inadvertently reinforce questionable (if not dangerous and unethical) stereotypes regarding gender, ethnic and national identities, etc.? Or is anything justified as long as it sells in the marketplace?D. How do different cultures shape and shade these ethical questions and responses? For example, are concerns with illicit sexuality in games primarily only an issue for U.S. (puritanical) parents, while European parents are more concerned about violence, while parents in Asian countries are concerned about …? Do different cultures understand the role of games differently – and thus, the ethical questions and ways of responding to these questions in different ways?E. Additional questions / issues?

2. Virtue Ethics and Ethics of Care

E-games, especially in their online versions, bring together participants from around the globe. A specific approach to the ethics of e-Games invokes virtue ethics – e.g., in Aristotelian and/or Confucian traditions – to ask the question, what human excellences and potentials are fostered by our playing such games (e.g., Coleman 2001)?Contemporary feminist ethics, including an ethics of care (e.g., as developed by Nel Noddings) would also raise critical questions regarding what we learn and develop – specifically, what capacities for caring, if any – as we play such games.What would such ethical analyses suggest to us regarding contemporary games? Are these analyses legitimate to use – and/or do they beg several questions regarding the nature of games, gamers, and game-playing?

The larger social impacts of computing and information technologies are one set of consequences that are ethically relevant to design and use of ICTs – and thus are of importance in Information Ethics.Many negative consequences of game-playing are thematic of both popular and scholarly literature, e.g., concerns with encouraging violence, potential addiction, and other anti-social impacts. At the same time, however, at least some games may be argued to have ethical and social value as they enhance social and other sorts of skills, serve as an attractor in e-learning environments, etc.What can reliable research in fact tell us regarding these impacts – both positive and negative? And: given the best available research on these impacts – what ethical conclusions (if any) may be drawn regarding the production and consumption of e-games?

4. Gender

It is not hard to find examples in especially the more popular e-games of gender and cultural stereotypes – stereotypes that are ethically reprehensible insofar as they ideologically justify a range of inequalities and the violation of basic human rights. If certain games only work to reinforce prevailing “masculinist” stereotypes regarding how to be male; and if certain games teach us to see “the Other” (whether as a female and/or as a member of a cultural/ethnic identity different from our own) as naturally inferior, the legitimate target of violence, etc. – then a strong ethical case against such games could be made. On the other hand, gamers may be perfectly aware that “this is just a game” – i.e., they may well approach such stereotypes with a distance and irony that helps diffuse rather than reinforce them. Moreover, not all games work by presuming such gender and/or cultural stereotypes. And finally, a growing community of women gamers directly challenge these stereotypes about games. Are there games and ways of playing games that help us explore our identities as gendered beings in positive and fruitful ways, rather than simply playing off and thus reinforcing stereotypes that may be questionable, if not oppressive? Are there games and ways of playing games that in fact help us overcome ethnocentrism and come to see “the Other” in ways that teach us to respect the irreducible differences that define diverse gender and cultural identities – perhaps even teach us to communicate more effectively across these differences?

5. Cultural issues

Starting at least with cinema and tv, modern western cultures encounter something like an "imaginative revolution" (W. Goebel): not simply mediated views of the world, but also fantasies and imaginative extrapolations that 'transgress' given reality can be constructed and communicated. This changes the lifeworld of people and potentially revolutionizes culture as the non-thematic background of understanding and communication. With e-games the imaginative revolutions seems to have made another leap forward - if not a quantum-leap: imagination now becomes tangible since it becomes interactive.These developments pose new ethical questions. To begin with: what do e-games and the experience given by them mean to the cultural background of understanding the world, ones own life and each other? Moreover, especially the immersion offered by e-games seems to enhance the experiential quality of what they mediate. What does this mean for our understanding of reality and for the cultural labelling of specific realities as such?For example: The game *Medal of Honour: Frontline* offers some experiences concerning history and war that movies like *Saving Private Ryan* never could deliver in such a direct and thought-provoking way. On the other hand most of the *routine* of the game obeys the *normal* rules of first-person shooters and thus deflects the *horrific truth of war*. What does this mean for teaching young people history in school and university? What does it mean for the historical consciousness of a generation that grew up with e-games of that kind?As another example: the games *Silent Hill 2* and *Max Payne 2* give some insight into the psychotic mind (since the protagonists in both games are psychotic). What does this mean for the cultural *labeling* of sound vs. psychotic? What are the consequences to prevailing conceptions of order or - with Foucault - regime of health? Can and should that process of the imaginative revolution by games thus be ethically oriented into a certain direction - or do we face a process that may legitimately alter the cultural setting of certain issues, narratives (in Lyotard's sense) and legitimations? And if so - who or what may be able to state and justify the legitimacy of these alterations?

6. None of the Above

We do not imagine that this initial list of suggestions exhausts all possible topics and approaches to ethical reflection on e-Games. On the contrary, we encourage interested authors to propose additional frameworks, questions, ethical and analytical approaches, etc., that will add to our insight regarding ethics and e-Games.

The Rules of the Game

Potential authors have to provide an extended abstract (max. 1.500 words) until 30. July 2005. The abstract should be written in the mother tongue of the author. An English translation of this abstract has to be included, if the chosen language is not English or German. The IRIE will publish accepted articles (3.000 words or 20.000 letters including blanks) in German, English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. For further details see the submission guidelines.

The abstracts will be selected by the guest editors, Dr. Charles Ess and Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan. Authors will be notified by 15. September 2005.

Deadline for the final article (according to IRIE format guide) is 30. October 2005. All submissions will be subject to peer review. Therefore the acceptance of an extended abstract by the members of the editorial board does not imply the publication of the final text unless the article passed the peer review.

For more information about the journal see: www.i-r-i-e.net

A list of documents, which potential authors might find useful, can be requested by e-mail. Members of the ICIE will get a copy of the list via the ICIE mailing list.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Not entirely out of touch with work, I did get an internet connection even as far east as it was possible to come on Long Island, but I restrained myself to short days and select tasks. So I had time to find a new friend, and do some of the important things in life.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

I am in the United States, and my students are having their last exam at the information study back in Volda. We have known each other for 2-3 years, and I know I will miss them when they have left, so this is the speech I should have held at the party tonight, starting right now.

Sunday, June 05, 2005

I just sent away the last version I will be poking at of a paper Hilde and I have been writing for the Women in Games conference in Dundee. It was not exactly smooth sailing, but we did it, the paper is done and I can start looking for tickets!

Friday, June 03, 2005

Do you ever spend days, when you cry for no reason at all? This spring has been so cold, so late, so cruel and so fraught with conflict, filled with work conflicting with work, responsibilities I cannot fulfil and loved ones I cannot be everything for. It has all hit me this week, when I was supposed to be away from it all and on top of it all. And so I have watched the screen blur, and I have had no idea why, why can't I just write, why can't I just do, why can't I just act?

I am far away from most of it, and as the load lightens, there is space for my despair to peek through the cracks again. But I have this tube of superglue, and as I write I am repairing myself, tightening it all up and wiping the tears away. It's just salt water anyway, and soon I will have finished one more thing on my list, and then one more and then one more until I can start breathing again.

This is pathetic, isn't it? Well, sometimes, I am pretty pathetic. I'll be back to being professional and professorial later.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

I had never thought I'd want to buy a Ford out of principle, but if the Christian Extremists are going after them for supporting gay and lesbian activists, it's almost enough to make me wish my trusty Opel into a Ford.

I just got contacted on AIM by somebody who wanted me to be part of The Big Brass Alliance. That is rather flattering, although I am a little paranoid about people suddenly sending me messages out of the blue. So, rule one if contacting me on AIM, approach like a human being, or I think you are spam and block you immediately.

However, as there was not a word about sex in the messages, I checked out the links he sent me. While I don't think I want to be on the list with the big brass - I am after all not that involved with US politics - I do want to pass these links on to any of my readers who might be.

The Big Brass Alliance is a group of bloggers who support After Downing Street, "a coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups formed to urge that the U.S. Congress launch a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war."

I was also sent a link to a site describing The Downing Street Memo, which is supposed to contain the minutes from a meeting in 2002, where Tony Blair in a meeting with his ministers agree that the intelligence out of Iraq was fixed. After Downing Street want to see more discussion of this news in US media, and hope that by planting it in blogs, they will.

This is interesting at several levels. First, I find it interesting that this piece of news is not being discussed in US media. I am however not entirely shocked, after the President's comments about Amnesty International's report about Human Rights in the USA. BitchPhD as usual says what they (Pseudonymous Rocket Scientist in this case) mean about this much more informed than I can.

Second: that when somebody wants to plant a piece of news in the media, they turn to viral marketing, plant it in blogs, and the blogs will spread the word. And it works. I am writing about it.

So, while I don't think I am Big Brass, I am going to watch this. I hope it will be good.

About Me

This is the journal of Torill Elvira Mortensen. I am an associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. The topics of my writings here are among other things media studies, reader-response theory, role-play games, Internet Culture, travel, academic weirdness and online communication - put together at random.
Google scholar page.

Personal Publication and Public Attention, Torill Elvira Mortensen (2004): "Personal Publication and Public attention", in Gurak, Laura, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff and Jessica Reyman (ed): Into the Blogosphere; Rhetoric, Community and Culture of Weblogs, at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/, University of Minnesota.

Pleasures of the Player (pdf), Torill Elvira Mortensen (2003): Pleasures of the Player; Flow and control in online games, Doctoral Dissertation Volda College and University of Bergen.

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The Gamers' Space

The Gamers' Space is a small project I am doing in the spring 2009. It includes an electronic survey, pictures of game machines of different kinds, and interviews done at The Gathering, a large LAN party in Hamar, Norway. For participation, more information, links and addresses, check The Gamers' Space.